After a week of watching pottery videos on Instagram, and dreaming about being on the wheel, it was finally time to get muddy again! This week was a bitter sweet end to the semi-private throwing lessons as two more classmates joined. I felt I had got much of the basics covered in the first class, and they were very lovely people (one grew up a town over from me in Ontario!) so I don’t have much to complain about! The instructor gave us a demonstration on how to throw bowls, we wedged our clay and off we went!

I felt in the groove this week, and was eager to try some of my hypothesis from last week. I had trouble centering my piece again, so I asked the instructor some more questions to get a better understanding of what it “feels” like when it’s centered. She reiterated the point that I have to ease into the pressure and ease off when it feels centred. What that feels like… was a bit harder for her to explain, but essentially when the clay stops bumping against your hands and you don’t feel like you are fighting it anymore, ease off. It felt a little easier after this, although my pieces weren’t completely centered in the end… so maybe I didn’t quite understand as much as I thought.

By the end of class I threw 4 pieces, 3 bowls and a mug. I had asked to do mug last to make up for the accidental bowl last class. I did a time lapse of that piece, to show the process!

A Simple Mug in the Making

I wanted to take a video to show my improvement, specifically in pulling up the walls! Something I struggled with last class. Sadly, the camera fell and missed this part of the process before the instructor fixed my phone. But you can see that I was able to get my walls quite tall and straight! I think slowing down the wheel really helped reduce the centrifugal force pulling the walls out. I also was very careful not to push with my inside fingers. However, as you can see I seemed to reduce the pressure the further up I pulled resulting in a bit of a flare that I had to even out with a few more passes. Next time I get to practice cylinders I will work on maintaining the pressure! Overall I am stoked with my improvement.

Lessons From Each Piece

Piece 1: A Perfect Popcorn Bowl

We used 100g more of class this week and you could feel it! The clay was much harder to move around and needed more force to pull out the walls, let alone up.
I built my walls straight and high before, flaring out to make it a bowl. To make a bowl you use place the tips of the fingers into the centre of the bowl, then keeping your hand flat and braced on your other hand (that is anchored to the bat) you lean your hand out toward you until you’ve used desired diameter
After this you shape the bowl using the same techniques as with cylinders
For my first official bowl – not bad! Will be great for portion controlled snacks

Piece 2: A little cracked

I loved the shape of this one, but didn’t execute well resulting in a small crack – fingers crossed if it turns out at all!
I only pulled out my walls to about a 2 inch diameter, then really bellied out the base to make this shape. but it resulted in a large ring in my base where the original base was. It was very hard to smooth out and by the time I got it the walls collapsed a little leaving a crack
Next time I will pull walls out further before building up so the base isn’t made of walls

Piece 3: Soup Bowl

After making 2 almost identical bowls I wanted to try something different… but ended up with the same shaped bowl AGAIN
To make it differed I tried to collar the top to bring in the rim. The goal was a rounded outside. It resulted in an interesting shape, but not quite the spherical shape I was after.
I think I collared to quickly as well knocking the piece off centre, so its a bit wonky but thats okay

Piece 4: A Simple Mug

I already went over my learning points in the video above but I thought I’d share my hopeful plan for this guy
I’m going to ask if I can take this one home after we’ve trimmed it next week, while it’s still leather hard so I can do some carving into it. The whole reason I wanted to get into wheel throwing was so that I could more easily produce mugs that I could then spend more time doing finishing work
I’ve attached some photos of some of my previous hand-built mugs that have the finishing work I’m talking about!

Next Week: Trimming!

Our homework for this week is to watch trimming videos before next class. Trimming is the process of removing the excess clay at the base to give it a smooth finish. Pieces are meant to dry a bit before this step so that they have more structure and shape when they get put back on the wheel. I’ve done a bit of trimming before and it’s very satisfying! I’ve linked one of the videos I’ve already watched in preparation for next class here.

Areas for Growth

Smoothing out the bottom: still getting ridges in the base. I’ve improved but definitely for more
Pulling straight walls: maintaining even pressure from top to bottom. I’d also like to try different hand positions, to see if that helps
Centering: I feel like this one will consistently be on my list!

Questions

How does different clay change the throwing process? I have a bag of clay that is older and semi dried out… can I still use it?
Practice makes perfect… but what do I do with a million imperfect mugs and bowls?
How does one make their own pottery studio at home?

Wheel Throwing Week 2: Bowls